Debra Kidd is a former English and Drama teacher and co-founder of Northern Rocks. She is the author of Teaching: Notes from the Frontline and Becoming Mobius. You can follow Debra on Twitter at @DebraKidd.

When I wrote a blog post outlining my intention to boycott the SATs tests, I had a message from a former teacher telling me a story about how, in her school, a couple of parents had requested that their children be released from SATs. The governors had refused permission and the parents, not knowing that they could challenge this in other ways, complied. With the growth of parental…